A character sheet in "Fudged Links" starts out as a blank page. Nothing is assumed from the start. What you must do to create your character is start with a concept and build a network of Traits and Links that models that concept.

Traits

Once you have a character concept in mind, start thinking about questions like, "What is this character good at?" "What are this character's strengths?" "What does this character like to do?" "What kind of education or training (or programming) has this character had?" "Is this character particularly bad at something?"

The answers to these questions are all Traits. Traits should be nouns. They can be very general, like Stamina, Intelligence or Grace, or they can be very specific, like Dressage Riding or Medieval German Cuisine. In between would be Traits like Horseback Riding or Cooking. With Links, you will be able to connect these together, so the more general Horseback Riding can help you with a more specific Dressage Riding challenge, or vice versa. But for now they're all separate.

Each Trait can be represented by a box on your character sheet, so write the name of the Trait, leave some room for a number (to put the Ranks in), and draw a rectangle around it all. There. A Trait. You may want to organize them into groups according to their generality or specificity, with very general ones all in one area of the page and very specific ones all clustered at the opposite end of the page, and you may want to be thinking about which Traits you want to Link together, so you can place them near each other.

Then you buy your Ranks. Each Trait is assumed to start out at a Rank of 0. The GM will hand out an initial pool of Points to spend on raising these. You can also get Points back by lowering a Trait below 0, meaning that this character has a weakness, with the GM's approval. The cost of a Rank in a Trait is the same as the cost of buying a Roll and is given by the One Table (adapted here):

The "Step Cost" column above indicates the number of Points it costs to increase a Trait's Rank to that row from the previous row. It costs 3 Points to raise a Trait from 0 to +1, but 6 more points to increase from +1 to +2. Likewise, you get a point back if you decrease a Trait from 0 to -1, and another point if you go from there to -2, etc. To save time during character creation, there's a "Total Cost" column, which tells you how many Points to spend to get the Trait there starting from 0.

As it says, this table is optional. You can pick a Trait, spend a Point and roll the dice. If you roll higher than your current Rank in that Trait, you've just increased that Trait. Add one Rank. If you don't roll higher, nothing happens. The GM may decide not to allow this at character creation time, however, due to the sheer number of Points there are to spend.

Keep in mind that anybody can attempt any kind of action, even if they don't know what they're doing. Everyone is assumed to have every Trait at 0 Ranks unless it's written on the sheet. Just because you didn't put any Points into Neurosurgery, that shouldn't mean you can't attempt a brain transplant, Dr. Frankenstein. Your patient may not have much of a survival chance, because the GM is going to set the Bar pretty high for this one. It'd be just as high for an actual neurosurgeon, but the real surgeon would have a +2 or +3 in Neurosurgery (and probably a +2 or possibly +3 in Medicine, and maybe a 2- or 3-Width Link between them ...).

Nothing in these rules should be construed as preventing you from spending Points, either to buy a Trait up or to buy die rolls to increase a Trait, at any time during the game. However, the GM may rule that it doesn't make sense right now. ("When did you become such an expert on the Aelrathi Empire?") Also, the GM may want to more strictly limit the times after character creation when you can lower a Trait to acquire more Points to spend elsewhere, especially if that is a Trait you have used before in the game. ("Since when did you become the world's worst cook? You made macaroni and cheese just last week, and you didn't blow up the kitchen that time!") It's all up to the GM and what he/she thinks makes sense under the circumstances.

Links

So you want to attempt an acrobatic maneuver and have suggested to the GM that you should make a Gymnastics roll, since you put Points into a Trait called Gymnastics. But then you think ... you've put Points into another Trait called Agility too! They sound as if they could both contribute. How can you make them work together? The answer is that you can't, unless the two Traits are connected by a Link. Without a Link, you can still roll based on which of the two Traits has more Ranks, assuming the GM thinks they're both applicable to the situation, but you can't combine them in any way.

But wait, you have some Points! Time to make a Link. Ask the GM; does it sound as if Agility and Gymnastics would complement each other? Yes, Agility is a more general quality that would contribute to bodily nimbleness and flexibility, very helpful to gymnasts indeed, and having trained in Gymnastics, your character may well be prepared for other acts of agility, even if they're not technically part of the sport of gymnastics. The two Traits don't seem to be equally general/specific, and aren't redundant or synonymous. It's Linkin' time.

Just like Traits, Links start out at 0. And, just as Traits have Ranks, Links have Widths. We'll get to what they mean in a minute. For now, know that you can use Points to buy or roll for an increase in a Link's Width just as you can for a Trait's Ranks (except that a Link can't have a negative Width). Spend, for example, 3 Points for a Link of Width 1, then write the number 1 between your Agility and Gymnastics boxes on your sheet. Draw a circle around the 1, and connect it by drawing lines from the circle to your Agility and Gymnastics boxes. This means your Agility and Gymnastics Traits are now Linked with Width 1.

All right, so what does that mean? When the GM says, "Make a Gymnastics roll," you can now use up to 1 of your Agility Ranks to add to your Gymnastics Ranks (or, in a different situation, vice versa). If you have both Traits at +1, you now add +2 to your die roll. It would have cost 6 Points to increase Gymnastics to +2, but instead you spent 3 Points to forge a Link to Agility for the same result -- and you added to your character's individuality at the same time.

The GM is the final authority about whether any two Traits can be Linked together at all. The decision about whether to Link should be governed by your character concept in the first place, but if for numerical advantage you want to put a Link between, for example, Mathematics and Firearms ("But I use math to calculate the trajectory!") the GM is well within his/her rights to say no. It may be tempting for a player to pick a Trait to focus on and try to Link 10 other Traits to that one, maximizing the advantage for the minimum Point cost, but this should be avoided.